Arctic Science Journeys
Radio Script
1996

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Science Funding
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STORY: Ask any businessperson what the three keys to success are and you'll likely hear "location, location, location." These words are at the heart of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' strategy for attracting federal research dollars in an era of tighter budgets. UAF Provost Jack Keating:

"UAF, because of its Alaska situation at the top of the world and its unique environment, is itself sited appropriately to compete on the issues that are of salient importance to scientists today. Among these things I would include global change, the ability to remote sense with satellites, things like the tools we have on campus, like the Arctic supercomputer, which is about to be upgraded to state-of-the-art, the Poker flat rocket launch facility...All these give us unique infrastructure to do state-of-the-art critically important science."

Keating says Arctic research will remain important because of the need to understand the environmental changes caused by global warming. Scientists say those changes are occurring most noticeably in the Arctic. And, he says Alaska's proximity to the last and largest fishery on earth, the Bering Sea pollock fishery, also will demand continued research.

"I look to the peer-review process to ensure that there will not be across the board scientific cuts but that the science that is done at this university will stand up well under careful scrutiny, which it has proven under tightened times. We basically have been able to slightly increase our budget."

UAF ranks 25th among the nation's universities that receive federal research grants. In 1984, the federal government spent 36 million dollars on research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Still, university officials know that new sources of funding must be found if UAF is to remain a leading Arctic research university. Merritt Hellferich is the executive vice president of the University of Alaska Technology Development Corporation, a newly formed office that seeks partnerships with the private sector.

"Alaska needs to look to activities in small business and technology for its future. And the university, doing 60-70 million worth of research a year, is a natural generator of technology. And using that technology within the state can lead to stabilizing and broadening the base of economic activity."

And in a much-touted agreement, UAF recently secured more than 100 million dollars in investment from the Japanese government. The funding is being used to construct the International Arctic Research Center on the UAF campus. Jack Keating:

"The reason the Japanese picked this is because one, the site of the university, and two, the current expertise of our faculty as world-renowned Arctic researchers, and three, the infrastructure that the university already has in place that they could enhance by the new facility. All these position ourselves for a dynamic entry into the year 2000."

Ironically, while the national science funding report predicts tough times ahead for the nation's research universities, Congress recently increased funding for the National Science Foundation, an agency that funds much of the research that occurs on university campuses. Keating says this increase is for this year only and that competition for fewer federal research dollars will begin in earnest after the 1996 presidential election. For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Debra Damron.